Over the years, there have been many portable structures that have been developed for a wide range of differing applications. It is generally the case with all such structures that one important goal is to provide for rapid assembly of the structure for its intended use. For some applications, there is little else that matters whereas for human use there are additional needs that must be met.
For instance, it will be appreciated that air circulation may well be an important attribute if the room is to be sufficiently comfortable for a human occupant. It is also typically the case in many applications that the room will need to provide a significant degree of privacy for human occupants, i.e., that the human occupants not be visible from outside the room. Additionally, the human occupants must have adequate lighting, particularly where the portable room is assembled where there is no source of natural light to serve this purpose.
In addition to these requirements, it is important to meet the requirements for nearly all portable rooms, i.e., that it be capable of rapid assembly and disassembly. It is also desirable in many applications to have an effective and efficient manner of transporting the portable room from one location to another when it is desired to disassemble the room at one location, transport it to another location, and reassemble the room for use at the latter location. In other words, the portable room should be constructed so as to cooperate with a transportable carrying case in such manner as to be capable of meeting this requirement.
In one particular application, a portable room can be desirable for utilization as a fitting room especially within modem retail settings such as major department stores and the like. It is often important to be able to modify or change the interior configuration of major department stores without facing the need to tear out permanent internal structures such as walls, shelving systems, and fitting rooms only to have to build new permanent structures in differing arrangements to meet changing needs. In other words, modern retailing is such that major department stores should be a shell with the internal structure having portability characteristics for efficient and cost-effective space reconfiguration.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the foregoing problems and achieving one or more of the resulting objects.